


Those That Came Before

by misura



Category: The Covenant (2006)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 18:51:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/600990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's Chase's birthday and Caleb will worry whether he wants to or not. (AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Those That Came Before

**Author's Note:**

  * For [grim_lupine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/grim_lupine/gifts).



> the request was for an AU where Chase was part of the group from day one.
> 
> since that sounded like a lot of fun, I wrote this fic by way of a treat.
> 
> contains traces of Reid/Tyler, because apparently, I very much swing that way. um.

Chase has always been a little bit mad. In a good way, according to Reid, and in this one thing, Caleb is actually sort of inclined to agree with him.

If Chase is a little bit mad, then Reid is a little bit (read: a lot) irresponsible and immature. Pogue is a little bit insecure (see: Kate), Tyler is a little bit spineless and Caleb - well.

Caleb is a little bit sensible. It's what draws him to Chase, he thinks, and Chase to him. They both see in the other something that they lack themselves.

"Stop frowning, you'll get worry-lines and go grey before your time."

"Not funny." Chase knows about his dad. They all do. He's a living morality tale, after all, a very real, extremely up, close and personal warning. (They merely _suspect_ about Chase's dad. He's the one who got away, the one nobody talks about, the bad penny that never turned up again.)

"Touchy, touchy. Cheer up, Caleb. It's my birthday in two days. And then - kazam!"

"Yeah. Kazam." Caleb would like to think that having him around will be enough to keep Chase grounded, after. He's the sensible one, though, and it's not as if his dad didn't have anyone when he ascended. "Just ... " It would be pretty arrogant: to assume he's going to be enough for Chase when, clearly, Mom wasn't enough for Dad.

"Just?"

On the other hand, it might be kind of unfair to assume Chase is just like his dad. "Just don't do anything stupid. You know how this thing works, that it's an addiction. I don't want you to - "

"Caleb. Sweet, sensible Caleb. Have you ever known me _not_ to do anything stupid?"

It takes Caleb a good five minutes to realize this is not, in fact, a very reassuring answer at all.

(In his defense, Chase was kissing him at the time. That sort of thing tends to be pretty distracting.)

 

He's home in time for dinner.

"You're late."

Or he would be, except that Mom gets dinner when she wants to, when she remembers there is such a thing and that it doesn't come in a bottle. Caleb prefers it to the alternative: that she doesn't eat dinner at all, unless he manages to cajole her into it. She's looking a bit better, these days.

Alternately, it could be that he's just too busy worrying about Chase. "It's seven. I've got some homework to do. Did you have a nice dinner?"

"Yes." She looks like her mind is miles away - or not quite that far, perhaps.

He kisses her goodnight like a dutiful son should and heads to his room, feeling like a coward.

 

 _"A birthday party,"_ Chase says, and he's smiling, but there's something not quite right, something _wrong_ and Caleb needs to figure out what it is, right now, before it's too late.

_"A birthday party. Just you and me."_

They're in the barn, Putnam's barn, but that's not it. They've been here before; it's a good place to get away from the rest of the world for a bit, away from prying eyes. It's not that nobody knows they're a couple; it's just that Caleb's sick and tired of people looking at him like they're judging him, and also entirely aware of what Chase is capable of, when he feels someone is bothering Caleb.

(Like Pogue, Caleb reflects, except different, and he still hasn't figured out what's wrong.)

He's not sure what happens, but suddenly, there's fire - flames leaping up all around them, and Chase's eyes are black, black, black and -

 

So.

One day to go, and Caleb is not at all reassured, while Chase seems not at all worried. Pogue and Kate are fighting over something stupid - or rather: Pogue blew up over something stupid, and Kate blew up over _that_. Reid is being bratty, and Tyler is refusing to tell Caleb what they got up to last night.

Business as usual, more or less, aside from Tyler, which is an inconvenience.

"Take it easy, Mother Goose." Chase is, as usual, not helpful.

"Someone was using," Caleb says. "A lot. And it wasn't you." That's an assumption, actually. Caleb _assumes_ it wasn't Chase. He _hopes_ it wasn't Chase. He's told Reid it wasn't Chase.

"It wasn't me. Two o'clock, sharp?"

Caleb suddenly kind of wishes it had been Chase. He'd have looked like a fool in front of Reid, but, well, now he's considering the alternatives and they're ... extremely not reassuring. "Yeah. It woke me up." He doesn't remember what he was dreaming about, exactly - something completely harmless and insignificant, likely as not. He remembers the waking, though. Sweat-soaked and breathing hard.

"It was probably nothing."

"It didn't feel like nothing," Caleb says, too sharply perhaps. He's not looking for a fight, here. Chase is the oldest, the most powerful. If he says it's nothing, chances are it is. "Sorry, it just ... it bugs me. It felt like someone was walking over my grave or something." It felt like an omen, a warning, but he's not going to say _that_ out loud. The Power doesn't work that way, with prophetic dreams and that sort of stuff, no matter what other people might believe.

"Ooh." Chase grins. "Witchy."

"How do you _do_ that? Just ... laugh it all off?"

Chase shrugs. "I don't know, it just comes to me naturally."

Maybe, Caleb tells himself, it's going to be like that after tomorrow, too. Chase isn't an idiot; he's just cheerful and carefree and a little bit mad, in a good way. Maybe having your dad walk out on you before you were even born and having your mom die in a car accident when you were twelve will do that to you, force you to either sink or swim to the surface, reach for something happy until you've gotten a hold of it and then never, ever let go.

 

The barn is burning.

The barn is burning, and he needs to get out, except that no, he can't. Chase is in here somewhere, lost, and Caleb needs to find him, make sure Chase gets out, too, before -

 

"Are we going to have phone sex? I mean, it _is_ after midnight, so if this is an early birthday present, that would be fine by me. Unexpected, but then, I do love a good surprise."

Caleb wonders if Chase was still awake, or if he actually wakes up sounding like this.

"I want you to meet me somewhere." It might be nothing. Chase said it was nothing.

Then again, it might be _something_ , and if Chase is going to ascend today, Caleb would prefer for there not to be any _something_ s lurking around. He's never seen an ascension before, but he's heard things can get pretty intense. Unsettling. _Witchy_ , as Chase might put it.

Call Caleb a worrywart, but as far as coincidences go, this one seems a bit too unlikely.

"Where?" Chase still sounds casual, but not dismissive.

"Putnam's barn." It might be good to have the others there, too. Caleb may not get along with all of them normally, but when push comes to shove, he knows they've all got each other's backs.

On the other hand, given the time, it might be better to wait. "Okay," Chase says. "I'll see you there."

"Okay."

"We'll save the phone sex for some other time."

 

Caleb's read the story, of course. The book. The descriptions of what people will do to other people when they suspect those other people are _different_.

He's experienced a tiny, tiny taste of it for himself already - and that was just because of people having a problem with his being _gay_. Different, but not _that_ different.

Putnam's barn is a symbol, in a way. A reminder. To the Covenant, but maybe also to other people.

"Caleb."

Chase is early. Caleb wonders how he's gotten out of the dorms, how much Power he's used. It's not that big a deal, of course; he hasn't ascended yet. Still, it's not a good habit.

"We need to find out who's been using. Now."

"Caleb?" It's Chase's voice, coming from behind him, while Chase is standing right in front of him.

"What - " It's possible, of course. It's not even all that complicated a spell, to create an illusion of someone else, to speak with their voice.

It _can_ be a bit complicated to figure out the difference between an illusion and the real thing.

Of course, it helps when the person creating the illusion simply drops it.

"Hello, son."

 

There's a drop of sweat sliding down Caleb's back. He feels it move, feels the wood of the barn, solid, keeping his body upright. Feels his legs, useless, his arms, powerless.

He can still breathe. With a bit of effort, he thinks he might be able to blink.

Vaguely, in the distance, there's a crackling sound. His nose picks up the smell of ashes. Fire.

 _Chase's father,_ Caleb thinks. He's only caught a glimpse of some wrinkled, hunched figure, a husk of a man. Not quite as bad as Dad, but not good, either.

 _Powerful._ Well, he would be, wouldn't he? Being ascended and all - and Chase isn't. Yet. Still.

Caleb's had the training - how to defend yourself with the Power. It seemed a bit useless at the time, a waste of time learning something he was never going to use anyway.

Maybe he should have insisted on getting the advanced course, too, if this is all the good the basic one will do you, when you're confronted by someone who's actually out to get you.

_I need to help Chase._

He's not sure how much Power he and Chase will have together, if they can even hope to be a match for Chase's dad. He doesn't even know if Chase is still alive or, for that matter, why Chase's dad has come back to start with. Maybe he just wants to say hi and meet the boyfriend, see if Caleb is good enough for his son.

Yeah. Probably not.

_I need to get up and help Chase._

There's a crack and a flash of heat and Caleb's legs begin to hurt - a good kind of hurt, the kind of hurt you feel when you've been lying in the same position for too long, the kind of hurt that will go away if you just move a bit.

So Caleb does. His legs feel wobbly and his arms feel like he'd have trouble lifting a feather right now, but they _work_. They work, and he's getting up, and it's just like he's dreamt: the barn, burning, and Chase, missing.

_The barn is burning._

And then the roof comes down.

 

They tell him it was a close thing, after.

Chase made it out and Chase got _him_ out.

"Totally gay," Reid says, grimacing. There's a picture of Chase carrying Caleb out of the burning barn on the frontpage of the newspaper. It looks very _The Bodyguard_.

"You'd know, wouldn't you?" Pogue says.

Tyler flushes, and Caleb thinks _huh_ because he honestly hadn't seen that ... coming? It looks like the next generation of the Sons of Ipswich might get to be a bit of a problem, though.

"What about Chase's dad?"

No body, the article says. The official story - Chase and Caleb's story, that they caught someone setting fire to the barn and were attacked when they tried to stop the guy, is still quoted as gospel, but there's not a shred of evidence to support it.

Caleb's lucky his reputation is pretty good. Luckier still that he's a Danvers.

Luckiest of all that he's still alive.

 

"He said if I willed him my power, he'd leave."

Chase looks - not older, Caleb thinks. Never that. More mature, maybe. Caleb has never caught his dad displaying any sort of affection - for him, for Mom, for anyone at all. He's not sure why Gorman sticks around.

Still, he knows that if his dad asked him for something, he'd probably try to deliver. Family's funny that way.

"It would have killed you." Wrong argument. "It wouldn't have saved him." Right one.

"The way he looked - " Chase shakes his head. "Would you still love me, if I looked like that?"

"Yes." It's the first answer that comes to mind, and Caleb knows it's true. He's not sure about Mom, if she still loves Dad in spite of ... everything, but he's sure of himself, his own heart. He's been sure since he was about twelve, or so, and Chase turned Aaron's hair pink for a whole week. "Assuming you're, like, eighty or so. I mean, I'd probably be looking pretty wrinkled, too, by that time, so, you know. Wrinkled together."

Chase laughs. It's the first time, since the barn. "You're crazy."

"So." Caleb swallows. "What's it like? Being ascended?" It will be his turn next. Happily, there's no evil relatives likely to show up and try to kill him, but that's about all that can be said in favor of the prospect. He's spent most of his life trying to be strong, trying to become stronger, only in the end, the terrifying truth is that there's no way to know if he's strong _enough_.

"Boring," Chase says. "Every time I think of something fun to do with all this power, there's this small voice in the back of my head that tells me I shouldn't. Funny thing. It kind of sounds like you."

"Thanks."

"So, hey. You need to hurry up and get better. Then _you_ can do all that stuff. Plus, you know, that phone sex you owe me."

"I'll think about it," Caleb promises. "That second thing."

"Say 'phone sex'."

"I'll think about it."

"You're cute when you blush. Now stop worrying. That's an order."

"Yes, master."

 

("So. Totally. Fucking. Gay.")

("The phone sex thing sounds like fun. We could try that some time.")

("Yeah. I'll call you from the other side of the room.")

("Hey, it doesn't work, we can just do it the regular way. Win-win.")

("Fine.")

**Author's Note:**

> by the time I got to the barn scene, I realized that from Caleb's pov, the whole big fight would be kind of uh background. oops?
> 
> on the other hand, I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to pull off Chase's pov.
> 
> also: virtual cookies if you spotted the two almost-quotes from the movie.


End file.
